


I Learned At Last What Home Could Be

by agentx13 (rebelle_elle)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fluff, Multi, Polyamory, sharon carter appreciation month
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 01:16:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6174499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelle_elle/pseuds/agentx13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Bucky heals and readjusts to his new life, he realizes that he isn't the only one doing so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Learned At Last What Home Could Be

He didn’t live in the apartment. He stayed there, but he didn’t live there. He knew better than to think he belonged there. This place belonged to Steve and the others who came and went - Sam, for instance, and Natasha, who wasn’t even there most of the time but still seemed like she belonged more than he. He stayed there with Steve until the stillness got to him, and then he left until the noise in his mind quieted. Then he came back and everything was still again and Steve would watch him with the eyes of a helpless man and Sam would say to just give him time, and Steve would force himself to act like he wasn’t bothered by his disappearances that stretched for hours, sometimes days, at a time.

One time he came back to find Steve wrapped in Sam’s arms, both of them deep asleep on the couch with their legs intertwined. He left again without waking them.

* * *

He knew Natasha. Out of all Steve’s friends, she was the one he respected the most. She was the biggest threat. She’d managed to shoot the Winter Soldier’s eyepiece. No one had ever done that before, and he admired how deadly she was. How dangerous.

Which was why it took him somewhat by surprise to find her giving a blonde woman a foot rub while the two watched television and ate popcorn.

“This is Sharon,” Natasha said without looking up. “She doesn’t like sharing popcorn.”

“You have to earn it,” the blonde shot back. He could see her shoulders tense when she recognized him. She hadn’t known he was there. He also saw the way Natasha’s grip on her foot changed, like a signal, and Sharon turned away and forced herself to relax. She tossed a piece of popcorn at Natasha’s hair. 

Natasha ignored it and let it sit in her hair. “You a fan of Dirty Dancing, Barnes?”

He shrugged.

“Sit and watch with us.”

It sounded like an order. Wordlessly, he sat in the recliner nearby, far enough that if one of them attacked, he’d have plenty of time to defend himself. When Sharon offered him popcorn, he shook his head. He supposed he could have disobeyed Natasha’s orders to watch the movie - or had she not meant them as orders? - but he had never seen Dirty Dancing and found himself curious despite himself.

He didn’t remember until later that he didn’t have to follow orders anymore.

* * *

He never thought Natasha would bake cookies, but there she was, standing in the kitchen with Sam, flour in her hair and on her shirt and her hands. Sam had flour on his face in the shape and size of one of her hands.

“You’re worse than Sharon,” Sam chided.

“I can bake without setting off a fire alarm. I’d say that puts me ahead.”

Sharon’s voice called from the living room. “Hey, I heard that!”

Natasha ignored her. “Besides, I poison people often for a reason. It’s supposed to get me out of bake sales.”

Sam gave her a look and held up the box of flour. “Not this time. Everybody cooks, everybody cleans. You wanted cookies, you bake cookies.” He wiggled the box in front of her face. “Or I could get Sharon to do it. You know she’s always up for trying.”

She snatched the box from his hand and dumped it into the bowl on the counter before he could finish the sentence. “I want _edible_ cookies, Sam.”

Sharon’s voice filtered in from the living room again. “I can still hear you, Natasha!”

Natasha and Sam ignored her. Sam leaned over the bowl. “That’s going to make a lot of cookies.”

She pushed up her sleeves. “Then we’re making a lot of cookies. Barnes, you want to help?”

Sam glanced up, his eyes widening as he saw him. He quickly relaxed and grinned. “Hey, man! How long have you been there?”

“Since right after I decorated your face,” Natasha said brightly. She pounded the eggs into the batter. “Barnes? In or out?”

He stared at them both. He wasn’t Barnes anymore. He wasn’t the Bucky that Steve knew or the James Buchanan Barnes that the history books talked about.

But he wasn’t the Winter Soldier anymore, either.

“In,” he said at last.

* * *

Once, he was awake in time to see Steve leave Natasha’s room before going to his own room.

* * *

Sharon was sweaty and exhausted, blood and dirt still fresh on her cheek, sleeping on top of Sam on the couch. Sam’s arms were around her, comforting and protecting, and one hand softly stroked the small of her back.

Sam saw him watching them and gave him a nod. “CIA sends her on shit missions sometimes,” he said. “Nobody trusts ex-SHIELD agents. They get sent out for the more dangerous stuff.”

He stood uncomfortably. He still didn’t know Sharon well, but he knew that he was the reason Sharon no longer had a job at SHIELD. Was that why Sam was telling him this? So that he could see what he’d wrought? “Is she okay?” he asked at last.

Sam relaxed a little and smoothed Sharon’s hair down with a hand. She didn’t stir. “She will be,” he said firmly. “Just like Steve’ll be okay.”

His eyes sharpened on Sam’s face. “Something happened to Steve?”

“Nah. Not on this mission, at any rate. All of us have damage, though.”

“You don’t.”

Sam smiled, but there was something wrong with his eyes when he did. Something sad. “I’m probably more messed up than any of them. Don’t tell them that, though. But I mean, I went from watching the closest thing I had to a brother die, and then I went around listening to other people’s problems. Don’t know where I’d be without Steve and the others reminding me it’s not all death and destruction all the time. They help me feel normal again. They’re not bad to have around, you know?” He made a sound in the back of his throat. “Even if they’re all heavier than they look.”

He was quiet, and Sam finally nodded to the TV. “Wanna watch something? I can’t reach the remote right now, but there’s a good game coming up on ESPN.”

He left the room. When he returned, he carried one of their first aid kits. He settled down to tend to the wound on Sharon’s cheek.

When he was done, he handed Sam the remote and sat in the recliner to watch.

* * *

“Squishing me, squishing me!”

“What was that?” Steve asked. He stuck his head into the room in time to see Steve between Sharon’s legs and pushing her deeper into the couch with his back. “I can’t hear you.”

Sharon squealed and wrapped her legs around him from behind. “Widow Thigh Squeeze!”

Steve barked out a laugh. “Did you just shout out your attack like they do in those cartoons?”

Sharon made a strained sound deep in her throat as she squeezed as hard as she could. “Is it working?”

“No,” he said, and there was something so fond in Steve’s voice that it made his own chest ache. “But I appreciate you telling me what attack you were going to use.”

Another strained sound, and then silence. A second later, Sharon grunted, “Last time I ever give _you_ a back rub.”

He faded back to his room as Steve laughed.

* * *

There were things he pretended not to notice. The way Steve would play with Natasha and Sharon’s hair. The way Sam would have a long day at work and would come home to rest his chin on someone’s shoulder from behind and would need human contact from them like it was air; it never seemed to matter whose shoulder it was. The way Natasha, ice-cold professional and former assassin Natasha, would make overtures of affection to the others by doing little things like painting their toenails, whether they knew it or not. Steve and Sam both had matching toenails one morning that seemed to take them by surprise, not that they were in a rush to get rid of them. The way Sharon was so bad at cooking but tried to make food for them anyway, always resulting in a last-minute pizza order. If anyone else noticed that Natasha chose Steve and Sam’s favorite colors for their toes, or that Sharon tried to make their favorite meals and ended up choosing their favorite toppings, no one said.

And he didn’t say, either.

He didn’t say anything even when he noticed that almost any given night, all of the bedrooms would be empty save for his and one other.

* * *

Christmas was better than Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving had involved Sharon working undercover with the CIA, Natasha working on something abroad she wouldn’t tell them about, and Sam threatening to drag them to his family’s Thanksgiving dinner before Sam caught the flu and ended up lying on the couch in a drugged haze. At least he and Steve hadn’t been dragged to meet Sam’s family.

But for Christmas, Sharon was back, as was Natasha, and none of them had the flu. Sam still carried a box of tissues with him, but he was well enough to hide the box behind his back and deny any illness at all.

Sharon opened the door to the balcony, and he could see Sam and Steve laughing inside, holding a bowl high in the air and handing it back and forth while Natasha told them that she didn’t care how tall they were, she _would_ get the biscuits from them one way or another.

“This might be the most violent Christmas I’ve had since 2007,” Sharon said by way of greeting.

“What happened in 2007?” he asked. He didn’t mind the cold much anymore, and he pulled his jacket around her shoulders when he saw her hug herself.

Her smile disappeared, and there was a glint in her eye that he had only seen before in his own and Natasha’s. He knew by now it had nothing to do with him; Sharon hadn’t tensed around him in months; he realized he felt more comfortable around her, as well. “Nothing that will happen twice.” And then the moment passed, and she tugged his jacket tighter around her as she looked over the quiet street below. “I don’t think anyone will die this time.”

“I don’t think the ham would agree with you.”

She chuckled, and they fell into a companionable silence. 

“Are you all going to sleep together tonight?” he asked.

She inhaled so quickly she nearly choked. She turned her head to cough. “Um. What?”

He looked at her. “I’m damaged, not stupid.”

She made a face. “Damaged doesn’t mean stupid. We’re all damaged.” She must have seen the doubt on his face, because she made a sound of irritation deep in her throat. “We’ve all had PTSD. Steve still has nightmares that he wasn’t able to save everyone, especially you. Sometimes it takes him a while in the morning to remember he’s not in 1945 still, and... it hurts him every time. Sam blames himself for Riley. That Thanksgiving dinner you guys were supposed to go to was with Riley’s parents, and now he’s kicking himself for not being well enough to go. He listens to other people’s sob stories because he wants to help, and he recites the script just like he’s supposed to, but he still calls out to Riley in his sleep most nights. Almost never talks about his own sob stories because he’s so busy listening to other people’s.”

She gripped the railing and leaned over to study the street below as she continued. “He just understands broken people so well because he’s so broken himself. Ask him how many times he tried to kill himself when he got back. As for Natasha, she can’t remember most of her past, and what she does remember isn’t always great. We still haven’t figured out if she was kidnapped or orphaned or if her parents gave her to the people who tortured her for years and molded her into a killing machine. She’s spent her life learning to recognize that abuse and rise above it. Every time she finds out someone’s being abused, she destroys the abuser. Doesn’t matter if she’s on a mission or not. She’s incapable of looking at helpless women or children and not seeing herself.”

He stood as silent and as unmoving as the railing beside him. “And you?”

Her lips twisted, and her eyes went dead in a way he knew far too well. “I had a rough couple of years undercover,” she said wryly. At his pressing stare, she sighed. “I missed a checkpoint. The area was volatile enough that SHIELD wrote me off. When I finally came back, it was to find out that Peggy had dementia and couldn’t recognize me. My parents were dead. I had nothing to my name but a plaque on SHIELD’s memorial wall.” She shrugged. “Got myself back on my feet, and then Hydra came. So yeah. I’ve got some nightmares, too. We’re all broken, you idiot.”

“And you all sleep together,” he pressed some more.

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. It may be weird, but it works.” She paused, then tilted her head to look at him curiously. “Why? You want in?”

He didn’t move. “I just wondered.”

“Hmph.” She opened the door again. “Steve? Could you talk to Bucky about how we all have sex together?”

It was the closest thing to horror that he’d known since he’d fought Steve on the Helicarrier.

* * *

The talk could have been worse. Sam talked to him next, then Natasha, and by the time dinner was ready, he thought he understood better how they worked. He’d come to understand they all seemed to be in a relationship with each other long ago, but now he saw how the nuances fit together. They balanced each other. Each of them handled the talk in different ways that subtly complemented each other, and he understood that they didn’t just approach the talk different, but each other’s problems. No, not just their problems, their lives. The way they used their different experiences and skill sets to... was complete each other the right way to say it? No. But it was close. They supported each other.

It was only after Sharon yelled that the ham was burning and she hadn’t been near it - thank you very _much,_ Romanoff - that he was left alone again only to realize that he had no desire to leave, to flee the intimacy of conversation or the possibility of a touch. He had somehow become a part of the group. That even though he had very little idea of who he was now, he knew he complemented them as much as they did him, and that he had found a home.

The thought no longer terrified him. The stillness of the place no longer bothered him. He might still have nightmares, might still feel panic rise in his chest, but this place and the people who lived there helped him calm down. How had Sam put it? They helped him feel normal.

* * *

“So what do we call you now?” Sam asked. He was at the bottom of the bed, Sharon on top of him and spread out across the others’ legs. 

“God,” Sharon suggested. “After all. I heard _somebody_ call you that a lot.”

“Shut up,” Steve said lightly, tossing a pillow at her. 

Natasha caught it and set it under her head as she spread out. “Legs,” she murmured to Sharon, and Sharon stretched out her legs to tuck them under the pillow. “Sucker.” A second later, Sharon squealed as Natasha tickled her trapped feet.

“New code name for Sharon!” Sam called.

She smacked him lightly on his chest.

“What? I didn’t say that you sucking was a bad thing,” he argued.

“Someone help me shut Sam up!”

Afterwards, when they’d all tired themselves and each other out, and he could see even Steve’s eyes drift close, he gave Steve’s hand a faint, careful squeeze. “Bucky,” he said. “I think I like Bucky.”

Steve smiled drowsily and leaned over to kiss his cheek. “We’ll call you that, then. Merry Christmas, Bucky."


End file.
